#10 I wanted to stay dead.

On the other side of the wall, a chorus of crickets held a concert in the grass under the night sky. The heat of the day had broken, leaving it cool and comfortable. Scott stood over the table in the middle of the room, looking down at the map and the various marks upon it. The next of few hours would be the hardest part: the tense wait through quiet hours. If everything worked the way he hoped it would, they would finally put an end to this. He could finally focus his attention on something else. Anything else.

He ran one finger along the edge of the old table, wondering how long the oak furniture had been here. This particular cabin stood in the part of the Preserve farthest from the city. It would take a human being two hours to walk here from the high school, yet this was a finished table that could have stood in someone's dining room, even though it was old and dinged up now.

"We brought it here."

Peter's voice broke through into Scott's reverie. The Hale lounged on one of the camp chairs that had been set up on the other side of the main room. He had carried a book with him on the long run here. Scott couldn't make out what the title of it was.

"Who is we?"

"Talia, Alex and I carried it out here one weekend during summer vacation. We liked to come out here; we pretended we were on our own, though a simple howl would have brought our parents. After the first few times, we decided we wanted a table, and this one had been gathering dust in the garage."

Scott felt his face scrunch up in puzzlement. "Alex?"

"My brother," Peter replied nonchalantly. "Older than me but younger than Talia."

Scott stopped himself just in time, so as to not thought blurting out the first thoughtless question that came to mind. If Derek had had another living uncle, he would have said something about him long before now, which meant he had died with the rest of their family. Instead, Scott folded up the map; staring at it wouldn't change the information on it. "How did you know I was wondering about it?"

"A sinister mastermind never reveals his secrets." "Or you could just say that you made a lucky guess."

Closing his book, Peter conjured up his patented smirk. He had decided to start something. "But I don't have to make a guess when it comes to you, Scott. I'm extremely observant, unlike some werewolves I know, and you've been running your fingers over the varnish about once every fifteen minutes since we've been here. Curiosity is nothing to be ashamed over. I find it heartening that even you've come to rely more on your senses than you once did, no matter how far you still have yet to go."

"It might be a nervous tic. You don't know for sure."

"Does it bother you that I'm able to read you so well?" The older werewolf relished this

opportunity. "I wouldn't worry about it. Years ago, when we first met, I thought you were simply in deep denial, mewling about your terrible state, but I realized later I was mistaken. We all deal with these moments, the deep breath before the plunge, in different ways. Derek used to stomp about trying to browbeat his way into victory. Stiles picks at everything in order to assure himself he's thought everything through."

"And you?"

"I tend to act as if I've already won. It's very calming, personally. You, on the other hand, tend to concentrate on the mundane. It's charming, in a dull, plodding sort of way. Spending your time thinking about how this table got here means you aren't thinking about all the ways that this plan of yours could go wrong."

Scott shrugged. He'd never admit it openly, but it stung that Peter seemed to have studied him so carefully. "You went along with it."

"I didn't say it was a bad plan, but even great plans do not survive contact with the enemy. You have to be able to improvise."

"I know I do. It's at times like this that I miss Stiles."

"See, I told you that you've gotten better at all this. In a dull, plodding sort of way."

Rolling his eyes, Scott went to the window but he didn't lift the curtain and didn't stand directly in front of it. At this time of night, the lights would be able to be seen a good distance away, as the cabin was built on the shoulder of a significant hill. They had chosen this place on purpose, as it was meant to lure their targets in, but Monroe had used snipers before.

"She'll probably wait until a little after midnight. At least we're comfortable." "You think so?"

"I've spent more time than you chasing after her. And she's spent most of her time chasing after me. She knows me pretty well, but you're a wild card."

Peter grinned. "Always am."

"She'll assume that the werewolf who rampaged through town and killed Kate Argent will be having trouble with the full moon."

"Kate thought that, too. One of the reasons why she's dead."

Scott didn't bother to look back at him. "I know; I'm counting on it. She'll wait until the moon is at its highest point and then come for us. I was worried that the night wasn't going to be clear, but it looks like we're in luck."

The other werewolf reopened his book. "You seem to be very sure that she'll show." "She knows that she can't win unless she kills me, and she's running out of time." Peter snorted in derision.

"I'm not being egotistical. I'm doing the things that no one else would think to do; the things that Gerard couldn't have taught her to anticipate. I'm getting the packs to work together in the way only your sister was able to do before. More than that, I'm getting them to work with the

established hunter families. She's running out of time." "And yet, supernatural creatures are still dying."

"Yeah, but not quickly enough for what she needs. Her mistake was not understanding the difference between a mob and an institution." Scott kept talking, for two reasons mostly. He was anxious about the plan, and laying it out like this would give Peter the chance to do what Stiles would have done if he were present: reassure him of its strength by forcing him to confront its weaknesses. Also, Peter had never lost his ability to sting him, but Scott had grown strong enough to want to not let him get away with it. "Institutions have durability, and that allows the people who make them up to be satisfied with incremental success. Mobs, on the other hand, have to feel like they're winning, or they'll lose faith. Once that happens, they're done. She's done."

"You don't think Gerard would have taught her a way to avoid that?"

"Gerard didn't really care about her; she was a means to an end. Everything he did was always about him. But Monroe? She's different. She believes in what she's doing, as horrifying as that is, and so she's focused on victory at any cost. To convince her followers that they're winning, she has to kill me and soon."

Scott went to the ice chest and pulled a beer out of it. He had insisted on having the beer, even though he wouldn't feel the alcohol. He was finally of legal age, so he was going to drink. He popped up off the top with a claw, pulled a swig, and then glanced back at Peter, who was staring at him.

Something which may have been reluctant admiration had settled on the older man's face.

"No." He couldn't take it. "You don't get to look at me like that."

Peter's smirk reappeared.

"You understand that if this plan goes wrong, we're most likely dead. I will be responsible for your death."

"All I ever wanted was for you to recognize that sometimes things like that are necessary. You obviously had your reasons for wanting me here, but you explained the danger, and I freely accepted. Did you expect me to refuse?"

"No, you did what I thought you would. You're not a coward, and you'll do anything that will give you an advantage. You know that helping stop Monroe will go a long way to rehabilitating you to others."

"Not to you?"

Scott ground his teeth. Peter clearly heard him doing it, so before he could say something provocative, Scott barreled on.

"I needed another werewolf to be with me. Monroe won't believe that I was out here by myself, so I needed another, particularly dangerous werewolf who she would most likely be having watched and thus could verify."

"While I appreciate the compliment, you've not answered my curiosity. Why me?" "Isn't it obvious? I hate you."

The look on Peter's face turned comical. It reminded Scott of one time, before the Bite, when his mother was looking for her car keys and couldn't find them. She had recruited him to tear up seat cushions and look through the house only to discover that they were where she had always kept them. A grocery receipt had fallen on top of them and she just hadn't thought to move it to the side and look beneath.

Hale recovered quickly. "I have it on good authority that you have hope that I can be saved."

Scott frowned. Either Stiles or Liam had been talking too much. "Only people like you don't think that you can believe in something while still experiencing an emotion that would run counter to it. Yes, I hope you can get better. I hope that you take advantage of the chances you've been given and become the person you always could have been. That doesn't mean that I don't feel my gut churn every time I have to talk to you, every time I see you, every time someone mentions your name."

"Is this about the Bite?" Peter said after a few moments he took to digest it. "You hate me because I've given you health, power, and the respect of your peers. Do you despise being able to run and still breathe?"

"Oh, fuck you. That's like telling a rape victim that it's not so bad because they still enjoy sex afterward."

"How dare you compare me to a rapist!"

Scott crossed his arms. "And what are you going to do about it?"

"I'm going to throw your words back at you. Only people like you believe that separating a reaction to trauma from the emotions endangered by it is as easy as you make it sound. Yes, I understood what I was doing, but the turmoil I was experiencing made the consequence seem so remote as to be ... unimportant. There was no more malice directed particularly at you, Scott McCall, than a tornado directs malice toward the homes in its path."

"That's ... fair."

Peter chuckled at him. "Your bland scruples will never allow you to comprehend what I went through."

"Are you serious? You're not a mystery to me, Peter. I know exactly what you went through; you showed me, remember? You used your pain as a tactic to try to coerce me into joining your side. I watched your family burn; I felt the skin char on the side of your face. I recall how the nurses in hospital treated us like an unfeeling sack of meat when we felt everything. Tell me, Peter, does your pulse still race when you feel the heat of an open flame on your skin? Mine does. Do you have to find your anchor when you catch the scent of wood smoke? I do."

It was Peter's turn to frown. Scott felt the nagging anticipation of Monroe's attack, this Hale's smug animosity, and his own constant frustration metastasize through his nerves like a virulent cancer. He crossed the room in three steps and he didn't hold back the full transformation.

"I hate you so much. All it would take is me putting my hatred for you above the morality you scorn so much once and they'd never find what would be left of you. Why do you think I dumped Malia?"

Never a coward, Peter didn't back down. "From what I heard, it was a mutual decision."

"Because I let her think that. Who encouraged her to take her trip to France even when she thought

she should stay? Me. Who, without her knowing, asked Isaac to make sure she met the eligible French men she told Lydia she wanted to meet? Who, without her knowing, asked Chris Argent to arrange opportunities for her there that she couldn't get here? Me. I did it so we would have a reason to break up that wouldn't ruin our friendship."

"Devious. What has that to do with me?"

"It has everything to do with you. I lay in bed with her, and I had a vision of a Christmas maybe a decade from now, with my son on my lap. He asks me to tell him a story about his Grandpa, and I regale him with how you helped the woman who burned your family alive kidnap me and turn me into a mindless killer. I hate you so much, Peter, that I sabotaged my relationship with Malia just to limit my exposure to you."

Hale tilted his head to the side. "I guess I should thank you for not forcing my daughter to choose." "I would never do that, Peter, to her. I don't hurt people to make myself feel better. That's the

difference between us. That's the only difference between us."

"Bah." Peter turned away from the confrontation and picked up his book. "That's not the first lie you've told tonight. I'll grant you've been through a lot, but you still possess the childish notion that everything can be fixed. That there's always a solution that doesn't require anyone to die. You want to say something as ridiculous as claiming that you're like me, you're going to have work harder to convince me."

Scott reached out, snagged Peter by shoulder. He whirled him around, snatched the book out of his hand and threw it across the room. "I ..." He killed the words in his throat. This was Peter. Anything he said that could be used as a tool against him stood a good chance of being used as a tool against him. He already regretted bringing what he had done to Malia up. She'd hear about it. Of course she would. He should have swallowed his anger and passed the night in silence rather than supplying Peter with ammunition.

"I don't have to convince you of anything."

He could have, though. He could have told Peter that when he was lying on the floor of that library with a gaping hole of his chest, when he heard his mother's voice and felt his mother's hands, that he wanted to stay dead. He wanted to make it all go away. He knew that nothing would get better, that his life would always lead to scenes like that, to destroyed friendships, to aching betrayal, to violence and pain. He wanted to die.

But he couldn't say that to Peter. He couldn't tell him that if they died in this cabin tonight at Monroe's hands, it would be just fine with him. That he had asked Peter to come because Peter was the person whose death he would regret the least. Though he would regret it, even more than he would his own.

"We'll see. The moon's almost at its zenith. Perhaps tonight." Peter winked at him.